Bérénice Béjo in César Díaz’s Revolution Drama

The violent shadow of Guatemala’s decades-long civil war looms large over Mexico 86, an intimate political thriller about a family of two trying to stay together as the fight pursues them abroad. Written and directed by César Díaz, whose 2019 Cannes Caméra d’Or winner, Our Mothers, also dealt with the deadly repercussions of the Guatemalan conflict, this engaging if somewhat rote second feature stars Bérénice Béjo (The Artist) as a leftist militant forced to decide between revolution and motherhood.

Per the press notes, Diaz based the story on his own childhood, and there’s clearly an authenticity to the way he depicts the harried underground life that activists were forced to lead at the time, with a suitcase always packed so they could flee at any moment. What’s less convincing is the film’s tepid emotional atmosphere and predictable chain of events, even if they lead to a rather moving finale that manages to pull the rug out from under us.

If Our Mothers was more of a contemplative narrative about the war’s long-term traumatic aftereffects, Mexico 86 hits the ground running and never really lets up. After a prologue, set in Guatemala in 1976, shows activist and recent mother Maria (Béjo) witnessing her husband’s murder by government thugs in broad daylight, we skip 10 years ahead to find her living under cover in Mexico City, where she dons a wig, goes by the name of Julia and works as an editor at a progressive newspaper.

Maria is far from home but still deeply entrenched in her combat, shacking up with a fellow activist, Miguel (Leonardo Ortizgris), and doing her best to fight Guatemala’s military-backed — and U.S.-supported — dictatorship from a distance. She’s also doing her best to stay close with her 10-year-old son, Marco (Matheo Labbé), who lives with Maria’s mother (Julieta Egurrola) back home. When the two arrive in Mexico for a visit and Marco winds up staying, it puts Maria in a tough spot: How can she be a good parent while waging a clandestine war against a right-wing junta?

The dilemma recalls the one in Sidney Lumet’s 1988 masterwork Running on Empty, a similar story of family ties and leftist revolutionaries that was made two years after the events in this film are meant to take place. But whereas Lumet’s devastating coming-of-age story provided a major shot to the heart, especially in its portrayal of a teenager trying to crawl out from under his parents’ weighty shadows, Mexico 86 is less emotionally effective overall, and works best during its handful of suspense sequences.

One has Maria receiving a secret dossier about Guatemala’s mass killings only seconds before her contact is stabbed on a crowded street. In another strong scene, she escapes from her apartment with Miguel and Marco, which leads to a car chase with the secret police. When they get caught in a traffic jam, the chase turns into a shootout, with Maria at one point appearing to hold a gun to Marco’s head — a telling sign that she’d rather sacrifice her own child than hand him over to the enemy.

There’s a way out of all this, but it’s a tough one: Maria’s overseeing operative (played by Fermín Martínez from Narcos: Mexico) tells her she can send Marco off to a “hive” in Cuba, where he’ll be raised with other children of the revolution in relative safety. But the bond between mother and son seems to be tightening, despite some rocky moments, and Maria clearly doesn’t want to give up either Marco or the bigger battle.

Béjo, whose own parents fled the dictatorship in Argentina and settled in France, does a good job portraying Maria’s push-and-pull between family and political engagement. The path her character takes can feel obvious at times, and there’s a general lack of depth to Diaz’s script, even if it’s been drawn from real events. Yet the director manages to land a powerful ending that puts the effaced Marco front and center in a major way, even if it comes a tad late.

The film’s title refers to the 1986 World Cup, which took place in Mexico and which is never referred to except in a few perfunctory moments. The greater backdrop to the story is what happened in Guatemala during the dark years of its many dictatorships, including a genocide in the early ’80s that lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. If anything, Diaz succeeds in conveying how fatal the conflict in his homeland truly was, making its way into foreign lands and tearing loving families apart.